


Falling In The Space Between

by rufeepeach



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, Skyhold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3135581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Varric visits Hawke in Skyhold the night after Adamant, and they discuss heroes, stories, and how the world suddenly got so much bigger and more difficult since Kirkwall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling In The Space Between

**Author's Note:**

> Female Mage Sarcasm!Hawke, Female Inquisitor, Warden Queen (so human noble warrior married to King!Alistair). Anders was killed at the end of DA:2. Hawke sided with the Mages. 
> 
> Inquisitor left Stroud in the Fade during Adamant, so this is set pretty much right after that.

“Y’know, we were meant to go out as heroes.”

Hawke looks up from her reading with tired eyes, but she finds a smile for Varric; she always finds a smile for Varric. He’s glad to see it: she smiles so rarely these days, even her comments and jokes have lost their shine. She’s older, he can see that here and now, older and harder and a long way gone from Kirkwall.

But then, he can hardly blame the girl for growing, or for leaving home. Even he’s traded the Hanged Man for Skyhold’s too-clean tavern, and Isabela’s bawdy jokes for Cassandra’s cool remarks. What’s left for either of them back home, but an empty estate and a slew of memories?

Leandra’s dead, Bartrand’s dead, Carver’s off doing Maker-knows-what with the Wardens, and even Aveline is too busy with her family and her restructuring of the city to pay much mind to her old friends. Especially old friends who, in her words, “tore this city apart for sentiment, and look where it left us”. Aveline doesn’t write so much anymore, after the Gallows; Varric can’t say he blames her.

“Are you telling me you’re unhappy we didn’t all perish at Meredith’s hands?” Hawke asks, one eyebrow raised, and Varric laughs.

“I don’t mean death, I’m far too handsome to die young, and you’d never have let them take you.”

“What, then? Sinking into obscurity? Letting the world handle its own damn problems for a change while I die old and fat on some far-off island?”

“You say all that like it’s a bad idea,” he points out, “At least your brother’d be happy. And hey, you could get married, raise a family.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever settle down,” Hawke sighs, “too many things to be done.”

“Exactly my point,” Varric sighs, “we were meant to go out as heroes, done, book closed, story ended, happy ever after knowing we’d made a difference. And yet you get dragged into battle again, and again, and then into the Fade, and instead of being the hero you’re just another advisor to someone even bigger than you. I’m as fond of and intimidated by our dear Inquisitor as the next guy, but did you ever see yourself as someone else’s soldier?”

Hawke sighs, and shakes her head, and Varric knows – with a sinking feeling, because if she’s given up then Maker help them all – that he’s right.

“You know,” she says, slowly, “there was a moment. In the Fade, I mean, there was a moment when I… I offered to stay.”

“What?” Varric gasps, astounded even now by her nug-headed bravery, even though if he’s honest it’s sounding more and more these days like a death wish.

“To save everyone else,” Hawke assures him, as if that makes it better, “I… the demon was going to devour us all. Someone had to stay behind, and I left it in the Inquisitor’s hands, me or Stroud.”

“Stroud died…” Varric murmurs, putting it all together, piece by horrifying piece, “That could’ve been you? If she’d chosen you, not him?”

“I left it up to her. I didn’t… I wasn’t brave enough to make the call myself. I never was. All those hard choices I prided myself on making so well, and I look around myself here and I know I couldn’t have done this. Thedas would be screwed royally if I’d been made Inquisitor.”

“You could do it, Hawke,” Varric says, and he almost completely believes it. “If you had to, you could raise an army and run it, save the world.”

“I lead a small band of thieves and outlaws into one minor battle – a battle none of us even wanted, by the way – and then just vanished into the wind,” she says. “I’m no Inquisitor, no Commander. I don’t care enough about the Maker or the fate of the world for all that.”

“Well, that makes two of us,” Varric tells her, “come on now, you think I’m here because of all that fate of the world crap Cassandra keeps spewing. I’m here cause if we hadn’t gone into the Deep Roads, then Meredith would have kept her head and red lyrium would have stayed buried. Hell, if I’d just dealt with the Carta myself and left well enough alone, Corypheus’d still be locked up. I even introduced you to Blondie. Everything that went wrong I had a hand in, I’m here to make up for that.”

“No, Corypheus was my call,” Hawke snaps, rising to her feet, pacing. Her fancy Champion armour has finally come off, and in her old brown tunic and boots, the crest of the Amells still embroidered on her cuff, they’re almost back in Hightown, with Leandra humming over her sewing, Bodhan simmering something delicious in the kitchens, and the world at their feet. “I decided to let him out, and kill him once and for all. My father bound him, and I could have let it be, but oh no, no, me and my stupid pride decided it was time to finish what he started. That I was strong enough. I think I was honestly convinced I couldn’t be beaten!”

“Well, you had a good precedent for thinking that,” Varric points out, fairly, “I mean, the Deep Roads, the Qunari invasion, Orlais…”

“I lost Carver, then I lost the Viscount and his son and the city with them, and then I let Tallis do the work while I made jokes about despairing cheese,” she spits, bitterly, and sinks down on her bed opposite him, her head in her hands. “I was beaten every time it really mattered… I even killed Quentin, but mother died too.”

“You had no reason to believe Corypheus wasn’t dead,” he asserts, incapable of seeing her like this, broken and bent and unworthy of herself. Hawke is the strongest person he’s ever met: she can’t be defeated now, or what hope do any of them have? “We saw the body, Anders even got his stupid amulet.”

“Oh yes, Anders,” Hawke scoffs, “lets recount that wonderful success, shall we? All those years of friendship and support, even when he was pissing me off I was trying to save him, and he murdered Elthina in cold blood, and damned the world with him. We’re in this mess because of him, you know that as well as I do. I’d go back and stab him again if I could… or maybe I’d keep him alive, just to make him see what happened next.”

“Still, Corypheus was gone, we all felt it!”

“There was a reason no one had ever thought just to kill him, Varric,” she replies, and there’s not a trace of the easy charm and humour Varric knows so well in her voice when she says that. She’s as cold and dead as the snow on the mountains outside, and he wonders if he really brought his best friend to the Inquisition, or if it was just her shell, playing the part. “I could have followed up… made sure Larius was safe, or told Cullen about the chasm, sent people in there to clean up. Instead I just swaggered out like the day was won, and look at what followed.”

He doesn’t have an answer for that. Dead silence meets Hawke’s words, and Varric shivers because he knows she’s right. They thought they were unbeatable. They ran around Kirkwall like a playground, fought a few small battles and called themselves Champions, and never worried about the clean up after. Theirs was a small story, intimate, one city and its fearless band of roguish heroes. 

But Kirkwall is a long, long way away now, across the Waking Sea and further still, and however much he wishes he could go home, he can’t imagine there’s much waiting for him there but Aveline’s watchful eye. Their stories were meant to be over. Happy ever after. Simple. Skyhold is too big and grand and bright for the likes of them, and it shows every one of their little flaws, their weaknesses: the things that Kirkwall’s dark little world hid so well, but that show them to be utterly inadequate in the face of Fade Rifts and Heralds and Blights.

“I told you,” he sighs, “we shoulda gone out like heroes.”

Silence meets his words; no one disagrees.

“I was talking to Leliana,” Hawke says, after a moment. “She was with the Hero of Ferelden when she slew the Archdemon, and when she became Queen. Everyone’s heard the stories, even I believed them, especially the way the King talked when he visited Kirkwall… the Hero, the Warden, the only Grey Warden to ever kill an Archdemon and survive, and I was so impressed. And then…”

“What?”

“Then Leliana mentioned her plans to contact the Warden. To make her sign up, like you signed me up, and I thought… I told her no, leave her in peace, let her stay a legend.”

“I take it our spymaster didn’t take that too well?” Varric chuckles, and Hawke grimaces, a spark of her old self flickering through at last.

“I think Isabela at last call was a prettier sight,” she mutters, and Varric laughs then, because he knows they both remember the one night in particular when Isabela wasn’t done yet, and ended up almost setting the Hanged Man – hell, half of Lowtown – alight trying to find more ale. And throwing things. Isabela drunk loved to throw things. “We got talking, once I calmed her down,” Hawke continues, slowly, “About how they were ten years ago, during the Blight. I mean, I remember that year in servitude to Meeren, but they had this whole adventure going on.”

“Oh? More than just stopping a Blight and wading through Ferelden swamps?”

Hawke snorts softly, and shakes her head, “Leliana was a Sister in Lothering. Come to think of it now, I might even remember her. She was planning to hide there forever, until the Blight came and she felt called to a higher purpose. Apparently the Warden was just a girl, when they met. Just a girl with a sword and an impressive noble line, impoverished and tasked with the impossible”

“Now, who does that sound like?” Varric smiles, fondly, and Hawke stares at him a moment, and then smiles properly, for just a second, and inclines her head.

“They saved the Circle of Magi from complete destruction, negotiated peace between the Dalish and their enemies, all but crowned the King of Orzammar, saved the Arl of Redcliffe and stopped civil war, communed with Andraste herself… and at the end of it, Leliana says, she was still just the girl she met in Lothering, except now she had a crown.”

“Sounds like an impressive young woman,” Varric says, “I’d better start asking for more stories, fill another book.”

“Her story was over,” Hawke sighs, “is over. Just like mine. Book closed, start anew, with new characters, a new plot… a new world, I suppose.”

“Is that why you wanted to stay in the Fade?” Varric asks, slowly, “to… I don’t know… finish your story? To go out a hero?”

“Maybe,” Hawke shrugs, “I just know I can’t keep this pace, Varric. Sooner or later, something will have to stop me.”

“Ten years have screwed us all, haven’t they?” Varric sighs, and he stands, crossing to sit beside her again, wrapping an arm around her too-thin waist. There’s no fat or meat on Hawke, she’s always running or fighting these days, not eating and feasting like way back when. “We were all young and stupid, and now we’re old and bitter. And y’know, I think the world got old and bitter with us.”

“I just envy the Warden, you know?” Hawke sighs, “I mean, her choices were easy. Save everyone, kill a giant evil demon, get the bad guy off the throne, ride into the sunset. Simple. I didn’t want Leliana taking that away from her.”

“Hey, you could have it worse,” Varric shrugs, “You could be Chosen by Andraste with a big green glowy thing sparking out of your palm every five seconds. You could be called to a higher purpose. How would that suit you?”

“Poorly,” Hawke notes, “Green was never my colour.”

“We can’t be young and innocent forever, Hawke,” Varric says. “At some point everyone grows up and leaves home. I’m starting to wonder if writing isn’t really my calling. I’m sick of rereading my own stuff and getting sad since I know so-and-so is evil now, or so-and-so died horribly.”

“Somehow everything did get serious, didn’t it?” Hawke shakes her head, “I mean, what’s wrong with just trying to make some coin and protect your family? Why is everything these days mages and Templars and demons and the Maker? This is Sebastian and Anders’ world, not mine.”

“You should talk to Sera,” Varric snorts, “I think she’d agree with you there.”

“You know, I might,” Hawke agrees, and flops back, her arms spread wide on the bed as Varric watches from the edge. “When this is over, I’m done,” she says, and while he knows she always says that, there’s a hint of something harder and more serious there this time than ever before. “No more summons, no more help, no more fighting. I’m finding someplace quiet to retire, and changing my name.”

“I’ll join you,” Varric offers, “I think you mentioned a beach sometime in the very distant past.”

“A beach probably infested with corpses and rage demons, knowing my luck,” she mutters, but he shrugs and laughs it up, wanting to keep his Hawke with him for just a few seconds longer, before the Champion closes back in over her features and he stops recognising her again.

“We’ll clear them out,” he says, firmly, “set up some kinda barrier to keep everyone out, and be fishermen.”

“Deal,” she sighs, and falls silent. Varric’s proud of himself for the first time since Adamant: he brought her back, for just a moment; he proved she still exists. And as long as the fiery, mental, funny girl he met in Hightown ten years ago still exists in there somewhere, then Bianca will stay loaded, and Cassandra can point him any way she likes.

He doesn’t know what he’d have done, if Stroud and the Inquisitor had returned and left her in the Fade. He prays he never, ever finds out.


End file.
